In the World of the High Tech Redneck, the Graybeard is the old guy who earned his gray by making all the mistakes, and tries to keep the young 'uns from repeating them. Silicon Graybeard is my term for an old hardware engineer; a circuit designer. The focus of this blog is on doing things, from radio to home machine shops and making all kinds of things, along with comments from a retired radio engineer running from tech or science news to economics; from firearms to the world at large.

Sunday, April 9, 2017

GB-22 - First Cuts

As yesterday's post might imply, it was kinda busy around here today. Not too busy to get the rough cuts made for GB-22 #1. The front piece is where the barrel will go, and the three in the lower right are the pieces of slide. The background is the 3/16" steel that will form the frame.

The barrel kinda stands out. It's also going to be a bit of an issue. The gun is designed for the barrel to be an integral part of the front piece, but I'm going to have to bore a hole for it, and probably ream it to final size. The barrel OD is about .368 (IIRC), so it would be loose in a 3/8 hole (.375). I will probably need to fasten the barrel inside that front piece somehow.

I got the frame into Rhino last week and have a solid model to make tool paths from, but I'm not ready to cut yet.

On the refrigerator, we've decided to take the bet and replace the controller board. When we popped the cover again today, I could smell the telltale odor of burned electronics. I pointed it out to Mrs. Graybeard and she agreed. It's not a healthy, pleasant smell, like a new Japanese radio (especially an Icom, Yaesu or Kenwood), and not the unpleasant odor you get out of some other electronics. Burned parts have their own individual odor. (Right now, some of you are nodding in agreement. Others are dreaming about the smell of their first ham rig.)

8 comments:

RE: the refrigerator. Electronic components sometimes just simply fail, and this is probably one of those events. But....if you've had some random voltages applied, that may have helped things along.

I purchase electrons from an outfit run by people who flunked out of kindergarden, judging by their on-the-job performance. About 3 years ago we experienced the routine 9 AM Saturday 2-second power interruption (seriously, you could almost set your watch by it), but this one was different - voltage to zero for a second or two, then restored, which was the usual routine, but when it came back voltage was low for 3-5 seconds (I didn't have a recording meter plugged in, but the one remaining incandescent bulb was dim), then back to zero for 1-2 seconds, upon restoration voltage was higher then normal for 3-5 seconds (very bright bulb), then to zero for 1-2 seconds, and finally, back to normal (approx 121VAC). The end result was the control board in the fridge took a dive, failing - fortunately - in "full cold" mode (that may be an internal default failure mode, I dunno).

When it turned out that there apparently was not a single replacement board in the continental U.S. (it seems that Certain Korean Appliance Manufacturers maintain parts supplies for only a short time) the dealer replaced the fridge under the extended warranty.

The new fridge (U.S. manufacture this time) went in with a 1500 VA UPS between it and the electron supplier, and a failed circuit alarm. The Random Voltage Ritual continued for two years until the kindergardners got enough complaints, including a few routed through the state's utility regulatory agency, to devote some attention to correcting it (it was enlightening to discover that my state has no regulatory authority over municipally-owned utilities).

The UPS, though, was a sufficiently good investment for a couple reasons ($129 on a Gold Box deal at Amazon), that I put another one on the chest freezer: first, as a "voltage smoothing" surge suppressor - I'd rather see a $129 UPS give its life instead of a $1900 refrigerator and the several hundred dollars of food in it, and second, it'll keep the fridge running for up to 25 minutes giving me plenty of time to fire up the generator if the power stays out. Same story on the chest freezer, except it's only $250 for the box but well over a grand for contents, and that's not counting "inconvenience time."

I don't know if a UPS would have prevented your board problem, but it might be someting to consider adding when your fridge is healthy again.

You buy your electrons? We just rent ours but we have to pay some guys to make them vibrate back and forth. When it's quiet, you can hear them buzzing.

We used to have a routine Saturday morning power hit, too, but that disappeared a while back. Maybe 10 years ago? OTOH, a surge suppressed outlet for the refrigerator is a good idea. I have one on the microwave oven but hadn't thought about the refrigerator.

SiG, how about using epoxy to fix the barrel liner in a slightly over-sized hole? I doubt there would be any issues with .22 LR with such an arrangement. Does the barrel already have a chamber at one end, or is that something you will have to bore as well? I'm thinking "Bentz" chambering, which is supposed to increase accuracy (but not extraction - bad trade off for the GB22?)

It looks like the barrel is just a bit undersized for a 3/8 hole. I think drilling it slightly undersized and using a 3/8" reamer will be just the ticket. That and some JB Weld or something like it ought to be the trick. As you say, it's .22LR, and single shot, so I don't think we'll see much barrel heat.

Are you going to make a firearm out out of the red pattern? It looks like it would reliably fire each time it was tapped on the butt. The trigger is a weight on the end of a spring. Has this thing been tested?I'm not a gunsmith, just a retired electrical engineer.Steve in Idaho

Basically, the red part is the frame that holds the barrel on the right and the slide with the firing pin on the left. You're right in expecting that little pin to be holding back the slide.

It's a single shot gun, so more than likely in my hands at all times there's a round in the chamber. As for testing, it's hard to know how many have been made, but think more like impromptu weapon than modern pistol. Check out Mark Serbu's videos on YouTube. You can see him shooting it a bunch of times, but never drop testing it.

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Retired radio engineer, follower of Christ, RF designer, mentor. Radio ham, home shop machinist, lapidary, silversmith, roadie cyclist, learning to be a rifleman, and home defender, - a guy with too many interests to keep track of.

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